Disability and the Housing Cost Overburden Rate

While the housing cost overburden rate for people with no disabilities living in the EU was 8% in 2022, the rate for people with a disability was, on average, 10.6% (from 2.7 % in Cyprus to over 20 % in Denmark, Bulgaria and Greece) (via).

photograph of the wonderful Futoro House via

Mapping an Emotional Landscape: Urban Anxiety in Johannesburg

The following excerpts are taken from an interview - on urban life in Johannesburg, anxieties, how apartheid shaped the city and on marginalised groups - with Cobus van Staden (CVS) and Nicky Falkof (NF), both based in Johannesburg.

NF: Why anxiety? Well, you can't analyze a political system without considering people's emotions to some extent. What are people afraid of? What do they desire? What identities are they imposing on themselves and on others? Who do they want to be close to? Who do they want to be far from? Emotion structures how we shop, which structures our economies. It underpins the physical ways in which cities are built. But we don't often think about Global South cities in these terms. We don't often grant people the agency and the inner life that we grant people in the Global North. 

If you consider media, cultural production, and literature, you might think about the kind of films that are made about a city like New York, where you have your deep, internal, canonical pieces of text that are all about how someone feels. And then you think of a city like Joburg, where you have films about Apartheid, films about post-Apartheid, films about violence, but never anything about people’s inner lives.

CVS: This is one of the reasons why we focus on anxiety rather than on fear, because anxiety is free-floating. We quote a prominent South African psychologist who calls anxiety "objectless." So you can be anxious about a particular issue, but you can also be anxious, very anxious, about not something specific at all—just a lot of different things—and some are defined and some are not. It is this anxious hum that underlies the experience of living in Joburg.
Because South Africa underwent apartheid, and Johannesburg was built according to apartheid ideas, there are buffer zones, highways, and empty stretches keeping people apart. The history of the city is written on its landscape. But the emotions that result from that history are not as well mapped. Mapping an emotional landscape ended up being our contribution to previous physical mappings done in Joburg.

CVS: Crime is a major reality in Johannesburg. It is a major structuring principle in how the city is built, how people build their houses, how they act in public. But the fear of crime is almost something different than the actual crime problem. When looking at crime statistics in South Africa, one realizes that poor people suffer disproportionately from crime. Crime for poor people is a daily, lived, physical experience. Whereas for more affluent people, the discourse around crime is huge, but they don't have as much of a daily experience of crime.

NF: From an intersectional perspective, crime is a huge issue in terms of gender. South African rates of gender-based violence (GBV) are off the scale. There are horrific stories weekly of women murdered, both by intimate partners and strangers. 

In the book, there are stories written by a young Black woman who traverses Johannesburg in highly precarious ways using public, mini bus taxis. These are dangerous, and young women are often seen as fair game by the drivers and to other men. Crime is, particularly for women, one of the most significant features of life in Johannesburg, because you are constantly hypervigilant. For working-class women much more so than middle-class women, and for women who take public transport much more so than for women who have private transport.

NF: For women, physically being on the streets feels quite dangerous. In Johannesburg, you hear stories of women sexually harassed or even assaulted at taxi ranks or other public spaces, and often it's “because their skirts are too short.”
It’s not just a case of women being easier targets, so it's easier to steal their handbags, or of stereotypes of ravaging sexuality. It's about discipline. There's something in the way that gendered crime manifests in the streets of Johannesburg that is about telling women where they belong and where they don't belong.
Some argue that part of this has to do with the disenfranchisement of a generation of South Africans who were left out of the supposed promises of apartheid when South Africa turned into a neoliberal state. Who do you take your frustration out on? Who's always at the bottom of the pack? It's Black women. I do think that is an oversimplification, but there is something significant in the way in which Black women are consistently disciplined.
We have a huge homelessness problem in the city, and there's a lot of begging. But the majority of these people are men. Where are all the destitute women? Why are they not on the streets? How are they surviving? A lot of women, particularly migrants, end up in very low-level, extremely low-paying prostitution jobs because they're not permitted to survive in other sectors of the city.

CVS: With regard to the LGBTQ community, many transgender migrants come to South Africa because it has constitutional protection for sexual minorities, which other African countries do not. In some ways, South Africa is a kind of promised land for LGTBQ people on the continent. And when one goes to Johannesburg Pride, in particular to Soweto Pride, you really feel that. You can really feel people who come from everywhere, from all of these rural places, and a lot of other countries, to make it to Joburg and you really do feel giddiness in terms of self-expression.
But of course, self-expression also makes one visible in public space, so it becomes a difficult trade-off. For trans people, many of them try and get to Cape Town, because Cape Town has an image of being more LGBTQ-friendly than Johannesburg. But frequently, these migrants end up falling victim to attempts by the South African state to stop migrants from coming to South Africa. The government can't legally stop people from applying for asylum, but it makes the asylum process as difficult as possible, including by forcing LGBTQ migrants already in Joburg to stay in the city.

NF: In South Africa, race talk and crime talk intersect, but race talk is also often quite overt. People are capable sometimes of speaking about race in quite straightforward ways because it is difficult to hide from it. Sara Ahmed makes this point when she talks about the way that scholars in the North write about the “invisibility” of whiteness. She argues, "Well, it might be invisible for you guys, but it's not invisible for us. Because we live with it every day." And because of the racial demographics in this country, it is a lot harder for white people to casually pretend that we’re benign.
In South Africa, the white middle class, although they do use crime as the placeholder for race, are potentially more cognizant of racial issues. That does leave some space for social change because people may be able to acknowledge the inherently racialized nature of their fears, which does not seem to be the case in the United States.

::: full interview: LINK

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photograph (taken in South Africa) by Paul Weinberg via

The Dementia Friendly Environment Checklist

This checklist, of course not an exhaustive one, aims to create a more inclusive environment and has been developed by the Alzheimer's Society UK (via).

Quiet space 

- Do you have a quiet space for someone who might be feeling anxious or confused? A few minutes with a supportive person might be all that’s needed. 

Signage 

- Are signs clear, in bold face with good contrast between text and background? 

-  Is there a contrast between the sign and the surface it is mounted on? This will allow the person to recognise it as a sign. 

- Are the signs fixed to the doors they refer to? They should not be on adjacent surfaces if at all possible. 

-  Are signs at eye level and well-lit? 

-  Signs should not be abstract images or icons 

-  Are signs placed at key decision points for someone who is at the building/area for the first time? 

-  Are signs for toilets and exits clear? These are particularly important. 

-  Are glass doors clearly marked? 

Lighting 

-  Are entrances well-lit and make as much use of natural light as possible? 

-  Avoid using areas with bright light or deep shadows

Flooring 

-  Are there any highly reflective or slippery floor surfaces? Reflections can cause confusion. 

-  Do you have bold patterned carpets? Plain or mottled surfaces are easier; patterns can cause problems to people with perceptual problems. 

-  Are changes in floor finish flush rather than stepped? Changes in floor surfaces can cause some confusion due to perceptual problems. If there is a step at the same time you also introduce a trip hazard. 

Changing rooms and toilets 

-  Do you have a changing room (where applicable) where an opposite sex carer or partner can help out if the person needs help with their clothes? 

-  Do you have a unisex toilet or other facility which would allow someone to have assistance without causing them or other user’s embarrassment? 

-  Toilet seats that are of a contrasting colour to the walls and rest of the toilet are easier to see if someone has visual problems. 

Seating 

-  Do you have a seating area where people are waiting? This can be a big help. 

-  Does your seating look like seating? People with dementia will find this easier (for example a wooden bench would be preferable to an abstract metal Z-shaped bench). 

Navigation 

-  Have you had a good look round and thought about these landmarks? Research shows that people with dementia use “landmarks” to navigate their way around, both inside and outside. The more attractive and interesting the landmark (which could be a painting, or a plant) the easier it is to use it as a landmark.

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photograph by Steven Edson (New York City, 1970s) via

Spatial Age Segregation and Co-Accessibility to Urban Activities

Spatial age segregation means that people of different ages do not occupy the same space, which again leads to little mutual interaction. Despite evidence suggesting that an inclusive approach to age leads to societal benefits, among them the reduction of ageism and the isolation in later life connected to it, age segregation is still a problem to be faced.

 

Usually, the concentration and distribution of various age groups living within a neighbourhood is "the" indicator used in literature. Age segregation outside the residential place is taken into account by only a limited number of studies despite its implications for everyday life (parks, supermarkets, restaurants, workplaces, etc.).

Generally speaking, there are two categories of accessibility: a) place-based (number, density and diversity of activity locations in a neighbourhood) and b) people-centred measures (degree to which people have access to a the destinations). Both approaches rarely consider the demographic characteristics of the people having access to the destinations.

In their study, Milias and Psylldis (2022) define accessibility "according to which activity location is accessible to different people within walking distance". The study of spatial age segregation is carried out in the five most populous Dutch cities characterised by differences concerning density, age structures and distribution of activity locations. Residents are grouped into the following three age categories: 0-15 years, 16-64 years, equal or above 65 years of age.

We start by exploring how accessible the different activity locations in each city are to the three population age groups under study. To do so, we calculate an estimate of the total number of each age group that has access to any given destination within five, ten, and fifteen-minute walking radii from people's residences. We then assign percentages to each destination that reflect the potential age structure of people who might perform activities at that location. These percentages are used as proxies of potential exposure of an individual to a specific age group (e.g. children).

In Amsterdam Center about 14% of the people who have access to the activity locations within a 15-minute walk from their residence are elderly, only approximately 5% are children. An example of the opposite case is the Amsterdam child-rich neighbourhood Ijburg where 20 to 30% of the people who have access to various destinations are children while only 2 to 6% are older adults. 

An emerging pattern, visible across all the cities under study, is that activity locations with higher age diversity scores tend to be located in the city outskirts. (...) In contrast, across all cities, activity locations with low age diversity scores (i.e., EI < 25%) tend to be located in the Inner City (IC) neighborhoods. This, is mostly visible when considering activities accessible within a five-minute walk distance from people's residencies. Overall, activities within a 10 or 15-min walk from people's residencies yield higher age diversity scores.

Discussion:

(...) across all cities under study a similar pattern emerges; that is, the activities located in the outskirts of each city tend to have higher age diversity values. These values are strongly affected by the population distribution in the Netherlands, where children and elderly populations reside primarily in the outskirts of the cities, contrary to adolescent and adult populations that are more dispersed across the urban fabric. Thereby, local age structure should be considered in tandem with the distribution of activities when assessing spatial age segregation from the lens of accessibility. 

(...) Lastly, our results suggest that the time required to reach a destination also influences the co-accessibility and age diversity scores. In particular, destinations that lie within a 10 or 15-min walk yield higher age diversity scores, relative to destinations within a 5-min walk from people's residences (accessible to a lower number of people). This further indicates that promoting people to perform activities only within a 5-min walking radius potentially decreases the likelihood of encountering people from different age groups.

A very interesting thought is the need not to overestimate the degree to which different age croups encounter each other: 

Conventionally, judging only on the basis of age structure in the residential space, these neighborhoods would not be considered age segregated. However, the scarcity of accessible activity locations within these neighborhoods could have a substantial effect on the likelihood of people from different age groups to encounter each other. This, for instance, might occur either when the portion of residents who have access to the same activity location are not as age-diverse as the overall neighborhood population, or when a portion of the residents have no access to any activity location and it is, therefore, unlikely to encounter other people. In other words, the sole consideration of a neighborhood's overall age structure could often result in an overestimation of the degree to which different age groups are exposed to each other.

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- Milias, V. & Psyllidis, A. (2022). Measuring spatial age segregation through the lens of co-accessibility to urban activities. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 95, link
- photograph by David Godlis via

How locals vs. non-locals see Glasgow

According to a survey carried out in 2016, Glasgow is the most stereotyped and misjudged city in the United Kingdom. The top two words used by non-locals to describe the city were deprived (21%) and unsafe (16) while locals described Glasgow as happy (59%) and relaxed (38%) (via).

"This misunderstanding of Glasgow is further highlighted when people were asked to rank the cities in order of how safe they are. Glasgow ranked in the top three most unsafe cities for nearly half (45%) of all respondents, which is unreflective of the official statistics released by the Police and Scottish Government, where the number of crimes committed in Glasgow ranks second only to Edinburgh in the whole of the UK." (via).

photographs taken in Glasgow by Magnum photographer Raymond Depardon (1980) via

Multikulti Berlin

In 2020, Berlin became the first German city to pass an anti-discrimination law aiming to eradicate systemic racism (via). The law bars public authorities, such as police and public school, from discriminating people based on their skin colour, their religion, gender, background, German language skills, worldview, age, sexual identity, physcial or mental disability (via). Several campaigns, initiatives, festivals and networks are dedicated to support and celebrate diversity in the city (via).

"Open-mindedness, tolerance and mutual respect are the norm and discrimination is not tolerated." (Because Berlin)

Immigration has shaped Berlin and "allowed the city to become the European metropolis that it is today." However, the positive aspects of ethnic diversity have been acknowledged only recently. Immigrants used to be seen as a burden who needed to be tolerated rather than included in society. Today, Berlin is promoting itself as a city open to different cultures and ethnicities (via).

Berlin likes to portray itself as Germany's most international city, a capital with a tolerant, worldly population that celebrates its diversity in street festivals, ethnic restaurants, and demonstrations for minority rights. "Multikulti," slang for multikulturell (multicultural), denotes an accepting attitude toward different cultures and religions, and by any standard Berlin is indeed international: 13% of its population has a non-German background (more than any other part in Germany); the culture, nightlife, and social scenes are a global potpourri. (via)

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photograph (Berlin, 1971) via

Designing cities for the mythical average person, erasing older people from urban planning

"Design of public spaces can exclude groups of people. Whyte (1980) calls this a drowning out of certain groups by designing for one group over another, or simply overlooking the needs of one group. Studies on gentrification have examined how the needs of people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds get dispplaced as investment is put into developing an area. This can also be felt by older people, expecially in many areas where older people have lived for a long time, but new younger families, perhaps from different backgrounds and cultures are encouraged into an area. Older people feel somewhat displaced and that their needs are unmet (Kelley, Dannefer, & Al Masarweh, 2018; Lewis, 2017; Phillipson, 2007); as Yarker (2019) notes, 'older people can often be 'erased' from urban planning and rendered invisible in their own communities' (p. 12). (...)



There is also the issue that if spaces are designed for other groups, then the space contains infrastructure that might not just be inappropriate for older people, but might actually physically or psychologically exclude older people. On some occasions, the exclusion is deliberate; increasing privatisation of space can design elements of the public realm to create more commercial interactions and comercial intersts of the landowner and tenants are placed above those of the individual. (...) An example might be a shopping centre or mall, to encourage use and spending, a sense of busyness is created, lack of benches and places to stop and dwell are found to drive people into shops and cafes and spend money. Ageist stereotypes may also work to keep older people out of certain public realm spaces that the landownder wants to keep looking young, vibrant and fresh. Across many western and developing cities, redevelopment and redesign of city centres, for example, are often geared around economic growth with the stereotypical view of a vibrant young wealthy workforce. Hence, homes and commercial space are at best developed for a mythical average person, a hypermobile worker with no dependents and at worst developed for the younger affluent wokrer, excluding the older person from living in that space." (Musselwhite, 2021)

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- Musselwhite, C. B. A. (2021). Designing Public Space for an Ageing Population: Improving Pedestrian Mobility for Older People. Emerald Publishing Limited.
- photograph by Vivian Maier via

Socio-Spatial Discrimination

Theoretically, public spaces are spaces for all. Practically, some are included while others are excluded. As a result, public spaces are biased towards a great many groups of people living in cities.

In his publications, Don Mitchell discusses how groups of the "Other" such as, for instance, both the state and semi-public and private interests eliminate the  homeless instead of focusing on the conditions causing homelessness. Actions in public need to conform to the dictates of the so-called normal or hegemonic society while at the same time cultural battles such as gay kiss-ins and public breast feeding are fought in the streets (Galanakis, 2008).

"It is often assumed that public space in the urban context is the common ground where people carry out shared functional and ritual activities, giving a sense of community. However appealing this may seem, in contemporary societies with an increasing awareness of diversity the term community, as well as citizenship and public space, are widely and rightfully challenged."

"Spatial design and management influence the affordance of urban public space, allowing and/or resisting the expression of the 'public face' of certain groups of stake holders, such as transnational people. These groups are often perceived as part of the 'other' in the city."

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- Galanakis, M. (2008). Space Unjust: Socio-Spatial Discrimination in Urban Public Space - Cases from Helsinki and Athens; link
- photograph by Diane Arbus via

Statement of women taking over an abandoned building on 5th Street, N.Y.C., 1971

Because we want to develop our own culture,
Because we want to overcome stereotypes,
Because we refuse to have "equal rights" in a corrupt society,
Because we want to survive, grow, be ourselves...

We took over a building to put into action
with women those things essential to women
- health care, child care, food consipracy,
clothing and book exchange, gimme
women's shelter, a lesbian rights center,
interarts center, feminist school, drug rehabilitation.

We know the city does not provide for us.
Now we know the city will not allow us to provide for ourselves.
For this reason we were busted.
We were busted because we are women acting independently of men, independently of the system...
In other words, we are women being revolutionary.

-----
- cited in Weisman, L. K. (1981). Women's Environmental Rights: A Manifesto. In B. Marks et al. (eds.) Makring Room. Women and Architecture (6-8).
- photograph (Times Square, 1961) via

The Yes Loitering Project. Inclusive Cities for Teenagers

A team of teenagers from the South Bronx, together with partners from various institutions, investigates youth and public space, i.e., how teenagers are targeted in public spaces and their limited access to spaces (via). The team points out that young people "are not simply forgotten in our cities; they are actively rejected from them." Nuisances, criminal threats, lazy, loud, disrespectful, untrustworthy, and misguided are stereotypes that prevail. Cities react with e.g. anti-loitering ordinances, no trespassing laws, noise rules, dress-codes, skating and rollerblading laws, parental escort policies, customer-only rules, hostile architecture, and auditory deterrents like classical music or the Mosquito (via).



"As a teen in New York, it’s a struggle to find a place to get away to. Our parents’ places are usually not big enough to have a bunch of friends over and it offers no privacy, most of us don’t have front or back yards, and even if we have a shared courtyard or open space in our building, there’s usually a “No Loitering” sign posted there.
One of the first things we did as part of the Yes Loitering project was to walk within a one block radius from where we met near E 168th St and Gerard Ave in the Bronx, and document all the signs we saw that discouraged teens from hanging out, such as signs that said No Loitering, No Sitting, No Ball Playing, No Skating, No Biking, No Loud Music, No Hanging Out, No Trespassing, and No Minors, as well as signs with time limits at restaurants and dress-code signs that prohibited hoodies. These signs were everywhere, from residential buildings, to restaurants, to stores, to schools."
The Yes Loitering Project

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photograph (Hilliard Towers Apartments, architecture by Bertrand Goldberg, 1963, Chicago) via

One Scotland

Dear haters,
you're going to hate this, but we've had enough.
Yours, Scotland

"Scotland believes in equality for all. No one should be denied opportunities because of age, disability, gender, gender identity, race, religion or belief, or sexual orientation." One Scotland

One Scotland is a Scottish Government campaign celebrating the progress made on equality "whilst recognising the work still to be done to achieve a truly inclusive society" (via). Part of this campaign is fighting hate crime - addressing bigots, disablists, homophobes, racists, and transphobes - and encouraging people to report hate crime whenever it happens:

::: Your hate is not welcome here, Yours Scotland: WATCH
::: Aneel's Story: WATCH



"Yes, we. Because no matter what your race, creed, colour or culture, you’re welcome here. After all, it’s the contribution of the many, that makes Scotland what it is: one great country. 
The truth is, all of us – living, working, laughing, sharing and loving life in Scotland – have more in common than that which divides us. 
This is Scotland standing up for what matters at a time when it couldn’t matter more. Because the reality is – and the evidence shows – a more equal, more diverse society makes for a more productive, happier society. So it’s with pride we say that in Scotland there’s no V, there’s just you, me and we. 
And we are Scotland."
We Are Scotland

More "We Are Scotland" videos:

::: Geoff Palmer: WATCH
::: Claire Simonetta: WATCH
::: Yuting Ling: WATCH

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photograph taken in Edinburgh (David & Alison Lambie) via

World Urbanism Day

The international organisation for "World Urbanism Day" or "World Town Planning Day" was founded by Carlos Maria della Paolera (1890-1960), professor at University of Buenos Aires, in 1949 aiming to advance both public and professional interest in planning, to promote the role of planning in creating livable communities. The day is celebrated in more than 30 countries on 8th of November each year (via).



This year, there is no theme. In 2014, the theme was "Equality in the Cities - Making Cities Socially Cohesive" (see abstracts).

::: World Town Planning Day Online Conference 2016: LINK




photographs by Lee Friedlander (New York City, 1963, 1963, 1966) via and via and via

Access City Award 2016 ... The Winner is ... Milan

The Access City Award is the European prize given to cities that make daily life more accessible to people with disabilities or older persons (via). The award is part of the EU disability strategy "that aims at making Europe barrier-free for persons with disabilities". It encourages cities with a minimum of 50.000 inhabitants to take part, share their experiences and to improve accessibility. Since 2010, more than 250 cities have participated (via).



"On the top position, Milan was recognized for its consistent accessibility efforts, as well as its commitment to projects for the promotion of the employment of disabled people, and the support of independent living. Milan’s building standards are to be granted for promoting universality in design. The city stands for its impressive steps to improve accessibility made in the past, but also for its ambitious plans for the future." The second places was granted to Wiesbaden, the third to Toulouse." (via)






"In addition to its excellent and consistent accessibility efforts, Milan has also committed to projects to promote the employment of people with disabilities and to support independent living. Its building standards not only support accessibility and usability, but they also promote Universal Design standards, which aim to design products and spaces in a way that they can be used by the widest range of people possible. Milan is the winner of the EU Access City Award 2016, not only for its impressive steps to improve accessibility made in the past, but also for its ambitious plans for the future." (via)




The Beatles had their first concert in Italy - in Milan - on 24 June 1965. It was their only concert in Milan. When they arrived by train in the evening of 23 June, 3.000 female fans were waiting for them at the Stazione Centrale. Four Alfa Romeo took them to their hotel, hundreds of fans spent the whole night in and around the Hotel Duomo to be close to the Fab Four.
The next day, they played at 4 p.m. for about 7.000 fans and once again in the evening in front of 25.000 people. They played for a little bit less than half an hour at the Vigorelli (a place dedicated to American Football today). Tickets cost 1.000,- lire, those who wanted to be closer to the stage had to pay 2.000,- lire  (via and via).



photographs of the Beatles in Milan (1965) via and via and via and via and via and via and via and via

Soul City

Floyd Bixler McKissick (1922-1991) was the first black student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Law School, a core leader of the Congress of Racial Equality and the founder of Soul City where he lived until his death (via).



Floyd McKissick's idea was to build a city for African Americans, steered by black interests and funded by the federal government (via); McKissick was the first black American to develop a new city with federal funding (via). He believed in "a strategy built squarely on capitalism to counter the entrenched racism that fueled urban neglect and the destitute conditions of black neighborhoods", a city in which black Americans would not be subjected to racism, where they could determine both economic and political destinies. After President Lyndon B. Johnson's lip service, Nixon, in fact, did finance McKissick's project ... McKissick had switched parties in the late 1960s to support Nixon (via).

“The roots of the urban crisis are in the migratory pattern of rural people seeking to leave areas of economic and racial oppression. … So in building a new city in a rural area, we help to solve this.”
Floyd McKissick

And so McKissick started developing a city in Warren County, North Carolina, in a region that at that time was growing poorer as residents were fleeing the South (via). McKissick installed Soul City in a county where more than 60% of the population were black Americans but virtually all elected officials were white, where the Ku Klux Klan was clearly present. Soul City managed to build the region's first real water system, a health clinic, new sewage infrastructure in one of the poorest counties in the state (median income in 1960: $1.958,- in Warren County vs $6.691,- nation's average) (via).

"Given the for blacks, by blacks mission of Soul City, the public investment served essentially as reparations, or at least a security deposit for reparations. The political landscape of the time—sullen from the assassinations of King and Robert F. Kennedy—was more sympathetic to racial causes and conducive to making amends." (via)

Soul City did not become the "spearhead of racial equality", no "new southern economic engine" once hoped and envisioned (via). In 1979 the city had a population of less than 150 instead of 2.000, big companies that had considered building operations centres in Soul City pulled out, controversy around the separatist approach, the oil and energy crisis, hard-right conservatives, and North Carolina's decision to dump tons of toxic soil waste in Warren County made it difficult for the city to develop. McKissick finally sold Soul City off to private interests; including the "Soul Tech I" business that is today the Warren Correctional Institution with 809 beds ... "housing far more people than McKissick was ever able to recruit to Soul City" (via).

"Facing a hostile political environment and hampered by a foreboding economic climate, Floyd McKissick’s bold attempt to sustain a free-standing new town based on African American activism seemed doomed from the start. The uneasy marriage between black capitalism and the federal bureaucracy sundered at Soul City, a part of the larger failure of the new towns movement to solve the urban crisis of the late twentieth century." Roger Biles

Despite everything, Warren County benefitted very much from the infrastructure funding McKissick had raised and the city became a "solid display of African-American driven urban planning" with some people still living there - people for whom Soul City was and is their everything, people who are proud to be part of it as a part of the city's legacy (via).

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photographs via and via and via

"Would they call me a diva if I were a guy?" Zaha Hadid, Architect and Woman

Do you resent being called “architecture’s diva,” or do you find it empowering?

"I do find it incredibly frustrating, but I don’t mind. Everything that I am called which was negative, I try to think of it as positive — so it’s fine. It is so tough for women in the professional world. If a man has an opinion, people describe him as opinionated or powerful. However, if a woman in business voices her opinion, she is considered to be difficult or a diva!" 
Zaha Hadid



"Would they call me a diva if I were a guy?" 
Zaha Hadid

When Zaha Hadid's retrospective opened in Vienna in 2003, more than 2.000 people showed up. At the door, T-shirts emblazoned with her quote "Would they call me a diva if I were a guy?" were given out by attendants (via).

"For mixed in with the grief at Hadid’s loss is also anger among women architects who, no matter how they felt about her work, could empathize with the hostile reactions that, too often, seemed to come her way.
After Hadid won the Pritzker Architecture Prize, architectural journalists who might have been expected to laud her achievement instead commented negatively on her looks, clothes, ability to speak English and her talent and worthiness as a laureate. No other Pritzker Prize winner had been subjected to such a belligerent press response.
The New York Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp referred to her as “a big, raucous peasant woman” whose “earthier appetites” leaned toward eating lamb testicles over reading books. Guardian reporter Stuart Jeffries suggested that the price of her global travels and successes was to be single and miserable. Edwin Heathcote of the Financial Times rudely asked her if she deserved the prize.
That Hadid rose above it, fought back, and even walked out of interviews may have been perceived by some as diva-like. But to many women in architecture, her toughness was about a refusal to be dismissed. And that meant a lot." Despina Stratigakos, Associate Professor and Interim Chair of Architecture, University of Buffalo

"As a woman, you're not accessible to every world."
Zaha Hadid

"Architecture is particularly difficult for women; there's no reason for it to be. I don't want to blame men or society, but I think it was for a long time, the clients were men, the building industry is all male." 
Zaha Hadid

"I used to not like being called a 'woman architect': I'm an architect, not just a woman architect. Guys used to tap me on the head and say, 'You are okay for a girl.' But I see the incredible amount of need from other women for reassurance that it could be done, so I don't mind that at all." 
Zaha Hadid

"I don't generally think of myself always as a woman architect, as I've said many times. People ask 'what is it like to be a woman architect?' and I say 'I don't know, I've not been a man'. I feel that I should be recognised as an architect first. But now I think that if it serves as an inspiration or it helps women architects to push on then that's fine. Whenever I give lectures, I get lots of women come up to me wanting reassurance that it's a trip worth taking."
Zaha Hadid

"I don’t think any man could actually compete with her. If we can eliminate the practice of talking about female architects, it would be the greatest tribute we could give her."
Eva Jiřičná



Dame Zaha Mohammad Hadid (1950-2016) was a Baghdad-born British architect and the first woman and first Muslim to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004 (via) - the prize was first awarded in 1979 - and the first woman to be named recipient of the Royal Gold Medal (given annually since 1848) in her own right (via). In a speech, Jane Duncan made the following remarks:

"Speaking as only the third woman president of the RIBA I find it amazing that it has taken until 2016 to elect the first female Royal Gold Medallist.""To right a 180-year wrong we elected a woman whom I have admired since my student days, visiting the AA [the architecture school where Hadid studied and taught] from the Bartlett up the road.""I come not to bury sexism but to praise Zaha. I am not here to castigate my predecessors and their committees for their masculine choices – what else could they do given how hard we make it for women to rise to the top of our profession?"  (via)

When Hadid studied at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London where she met Rem Koolhaas, Elia Zenghelis and Bernard Tschumi (via), only about 6% of the profession were women (via). She often spoke about the unfair treatment she experienced as both a woman and a foreigner. After her sudden death last March, more female architects started speaking out about suffering sexism at work. According to a survey carried out by the Architectural Review magazine, 61% of women architects have been victim of gender discrimination; four out of ten say that their bosses are responsible (via)

"She did not fit the stereotypical white male profession of registered architects. Jealousy and prejudice failed to bar her way, but it took its toll. Very few people realise the misogynistic, racist and anti-architect environment she had to navigate in Britain. For Muslims, minorities and women, Zaha is a shining torch beaming into the dark minds for whom a few tiles falling off a building seemed a justification to dismiss her work."  Yasmin Shariff, director of Dennis Sharp Architects

“I think Zaha was right that women have to work harder than men to prove themselves. There is a shortage of women architects at the top of the profession and running their own practices in the UK.”  Alison Brooks, winner of Stirling prize in 2008

More statements:

"I am sure that as a woman I can do a very good skyscraper."
Zaha Hadid

"People don't talk to you properly. It's the way they talk to you; they dismiss you. I think it's a combination of me being a woman and a foreigner."
Zaha Hadid

"As a woman, I'm expected to want everything to be nice and to be nice myself. A very English thing. I don't design nice buildings - I don't like them. I like architecture to have some raw, vital, earthy quality."
Zaha Hadid

"I'm judged more harshly because I am a woman."
Zaha Hadid

"In London it was very timid, people behave well, they're polite -- especially if you're a woman. A woman should behave properly. It means that you don't challenge the situation."
Zaha Hadid

"If you're a man you're seen as someone who's tough and ambitious," she says. "But when a woman is ambitious it's seen as bad. I think things have changed in the last 20 years. They're better. But there's still prejudice."
Zaha Hadid

"I think it's a boys' club everywhere. And I'm not privy to that world so much -- they go fishing, they go golfing, they go out and have a drink. And as a woman you're excluded from that bonding. It's a big difference."
Zaha Hadid

"Men think a woman should not have an opinion."
Zaha Hadid

"Society has not been set up in a way that allows women to go back to work after taking time off. Many women now have to work as well as do everything at home and no one can do everything. Society needs to find a way of relieving women."
Zaha Hadid

"I don't think people should do things because you know, 'I am turning this age, I must go have a husband.' If you find somebody and it works out then have kids, it's very nice. But if you don't, you don't."
Zaha Hadid

"In Iraq, many of my female friends were architects and professionals with a lot of power during the 1980s while all the men were at war in Iran."
Zaha Hadid

"When I taught, all my best students were women."
Zaha Hadid

"There are lots of women in school and whenever I teach I have a lot of women students, all from the beginning. When I started teaching there were mostly boys, and now there are lots of women who are actually sometimes the best students in the studio. It's a mystery to me what happens to them afterwards. I don't know what happens, whether it's a lack of confidence or difficult circumstances in offices or vanity or they're not accepted. I don't know.
Zaha Hadid

"It’s still very difficult for women to operate as professionals because there are still some worlds women have no access to. But I don’t believe that much remains of the stereotype that architecture should be a male rather than a female career. 50% of first year architectural students are women, so women certainly don’t perceive this career as alien to their gender. In our office we have no stereotypical categories that relate to gender at all."
Zaha Hadid

"You now see more established, respected female architects all the time. That doesn’t mean it’s easy. Sometimes the difficulties are incomprehensible. But in the last fifteen years there’s been tremendous change, and now it’s seen as normal to have women in this profession."
Zaha Hadid

"If you think about making a city that is much more porous, many accessible spaces, that is a political position, because you don't fortify, you open it up so that many people can use it."
Zaha Hadid

"Women are always told, 'You're not going to make it, its too difficult, you can't do that, don't enter this competition, you'll never win it,' - they need confidence in themselves and people around them to help them to get on." 
Zaha Hadid

"Like men, women have to be diligent and work hard." 
Zaha Hadid

"Half of architecture students are women, and you see respected, established female architects all the time."
Zaha Hadid

"Being an Arab woman and a modern architect certainly don’t exclude each other! When I was growing up in Iraq, there were many woman architects. My earliest memory of architecture, I was perhaps 6 years old, was of my aunt building a house in Mosul in the north of Iraq."
Zaha Hadid

"It’s still very difficult for women to operate as professionals because there are still some worlds women have no access to. But I don’t believe that much remains of the stereotype that architecture should be a male rather than a female career. Fifty percent of first year architectural students are women, so women certainly don’t perceive this career as alien to their gender. In our office we have no stereotypical categories that relate to gender at all.
You now see more established, respected female architects all the time. That doesn’t mean it’s easy. Sometimes the difficulties are incomprehensible. But in the last fifteen years there’s been tremendous change, and now it’s seen as normal to have women in this profession.
I still experience resistance, but I think this keeps me focused. It’s not as if I just appear somewhere and everybody says yes to me — it’s still a struggle, despite having gone through it a hundred times. It’s not necessarily always great, but it makes you think about and do things in a different way."
Zaha Hadid

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photographs via and (by Bryan Adam) via and via and via 

New York: The most linguistically diverse city

New York City, the "melting pot", is a culturally diverse metropolis with a population "defined by a long history of international immigration". Currently, about 36% of its population are foreign-born (via).



New York City is home to the largest Jewish community outside Israel, to the largest African American community of any US-American city, and the largest community of overseas Chinese (with six Chinatowns). Queens - the only large county in the U.S. where the median income among black households has surpassed that of whites - is the most diverse borough (via).





About 800 languages are spoken in New York, the most linguistically rich city in the world (via). Just 51% of New Yorkers speak only English at home. The languages of the other 49% span the globe with a majority of Spanish (and Spanish Creole) speakers (25%). There are also 85.000 Yiddish speakers (via). Over the last 30 years, the number of people speaking a language other than English at home increased by 140% with at least 303 languages. Different languages are part of everyday life: In the underground, information signs warning passengers to avoid electrified rails are written in seven languages.
New York is the city where many languages live but it is also said to be a place where languages will die turning the city into a "graveyard for languages". According to UNESCO estimations, half of the world's 6.500 languages are critically endangered. These languages are not necessarily spoken in remote valleys or highlands, "languages can die on the 26th floor of skyscrapers too". Daniel Kaufman, Juliette Blevins and Bob Holman set up the "Endangered Language Alliance" aiming to promote research on endangered languages in New York City and their conservation.

"There are these communities that are completely gone in their homeland. One of them, the Gottscheers, is a community of Germanic people who were living in Slovenia, and they were isolated from the rest of the Germanic populations. They were surrounded by Slavic speakers for several hundreds of years so they really have their own variety [of language] which is now unintelligible to other German speakers." Daniel Kaufman

The last speakers of this language happened to end up in Queens. Often, as people transition from one mother tongue into another, languages die (via). Some of the vulnerable languages are Aramaic, Chaldic, Mandaic, Bukhari, Irish Gaelic, Kashubian, Rhaeto-Romanic, Romany, Yiddish, and indigenous Mexican languages. There are, for instance, several hundred native speakers of Istro-Romanian, classified as severely endangered by UNESCO, living in Queens who probably outnumber those in Istria (via).



“It is the capital of language density in the world. We’re sitting in an endangerment hot spot where we are surrounded by languages that are not going to be around even in 20 or 30 years.”
Daniel Kaufman



“Do I worry that our culture is getting lost? As I get older, I’m thinking more about stuff like that. Most of the older people die away and the language dies with them.” (via)

"The idea was to deal with personalities and types. With the recognition of the passersby that they have been recognized. The face is a map of the person, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, 'Only fools look beneath the surface. It’s all there to be read.'" Charles H. Traub

Charles H. Traub worked on his street photography collection "Lunch Time" from 1977 to 1980. He took about 400 photographs of "ordinary" people in New York City, Chicago, Florida and some European cities. In fact, when Jackie Kennedy Onassies stopped and asked him to be photographed he turned her down since he was not interested in celebrities (via).



photographs by Charles H. Traub via and via and via and via and via and via and via and via and via and via and via and via and via and via and via and via

Stereotypes of East, West, South, and North London

"The language people use about places provides a valuable insight into this personal experience and the image may be studied through their descriptions. It is through these descriptions of places that stereotypes have the greatest potential for development. Stereotypes have been recognized as an important element in urban and regional perception (...)."
Jacquelin A. Burgess (1974)



According to a survey among 1294 Londoners carried out by YouGov in January 2014, each of the four London sub-regions has a distinct "brand". People were presented a list of adjectives and asked which of the four areas they associated with the adjectives (and stereotypes).The map based on the adjectives visualises the tendency to describe the regions mostly in a contrasting manner: the posh West, the poor East, the intellectual North, the rough South (via).



The "intellectual North" is associated with adjectives such as "cosmopolitan, suburban, rough, family friendly, and trendy", the "rough South" with "suburban, poor, cosmopolitan, up and coming, family friendly and gritty". The contrast between East and West is the most distinct one with the "poor East" being associated with "rough, dirty, gritty, up and coming, and cosmoplitan" and the "posh West" described as "cosmopolitan, suburban, trendy, pretentious, cultured and family friendly" (via). As Burgess (1974) says, stereotypes are an important element in urban perception. And, they emphasise differences.



Trent Gillaspie posted his "Judgmental Denver Map" on Facebook in January 2013. Since then, a great many stereotyped, opinionated, biased maps (among them London) have been submitted, some of them causing a lot of irritation. His motto: "As long as you offend everyone you possibly can, it ends up making it OK." (via). Interesting philosophy.

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- Burgess, J. A. (1974). Stereotypes and urban images. Area, 6(3), 167-171.
- photographs of London (one and two taken in Carnaby Street) via and via and via